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CHAPTER TWENTY

MASON

I laugh at the description my brother uses of the smell permeating from Benji’s ass. He’s right about one thing, you almost need a gas mask to deal with the odor wafting from his body. It’s as if everything he’s eaten throughout his miserable life just vacated his body. I almost feel sorry for him, then realize he’s behind Myles’ disappearance and decide he’s reaping what he sowed.

“He hasn’t eaten any fresh fruit and veggies,” I answer, as Mane gags from the comfort of my arms, so I ask her, “Need to step away for a minute until the smell passes?”

“I don’t think that smell will be leaving anytime soon,” she tells me, lifting up her shirt from the hem at the bottom, placing it over her nose.

“Gross,” Ella gripes, scoffing. “Even the oxygen from the fresh air isn’t strong or organic enough to help that stench. He needs to be stripped and hosed down.”

“Oooh, I can help with that,” Kruger announces, pulling a pair of mini-shears out from his back pocket and strutting over to Benji like he’s his prey.

“Does he always carry a pair of shears in the back of his pants?” I lean over Mane and ask Gunner. “That’s an odd thing to just whip out all casual-like.”

“Nah. He found them stuck in your mom’s flower bed when he was sent to distract your folks,” Gunner claims. “She was out back with a cup of coffee unwinding and enjoying the evening setting.”

“Why would you send Kruger to do that job?” I inquire because Kruger isn’t the one I would’ve chosen to dispatch for that mission.

“Believe it or not, the fucker has a silver tongue,” Gunner swears. “He has a knack for wooing older women.”

“Do not say wooing and woman in the same sentence when it comes to my mother,” Maverick chides, doing a full body shiver. “That’s not an image I wanted branded into my brain.”

“What’s the matter, Mav? Can’t picture Mom flirting with a man other than our dad? Doesn’t matter that she’s a mom, she’s still sexual, a woman who enjoys the attention of a man,” I tease, smirking when I hear the male cries singing through the breeze as Benji comes to.

“Dude,” Maverick scolds. “No. Just… no . Why would you even use the word sexual in any reference to the woman who gave birth to us?” He’s ignoring the irate shouting coming from our captee, stuck on the image of Kruger laying it on thick to our mother.

“Okay, boys. Banter later, your sibling rivalry… or whatever this is that’s happening between y’all can wait until we get the answers as to where Myles is,” Hydro says, stepping between the two of them with his arms raised in the air.

As a unit, we switch our attention to where Kruger is snipping off Benji’s pants and underwear. “They’re right, you stink, my man,” Kruger tells him. “Will the hose stretch this far?”

“No,” Maverick answers. “But I have a few jugs we prefill out at the barn I can run and grab real fast.”

“How many you got? Because this fucker has shit running up and down his legs,” Bruiser asks.

“I have an industrial size bottle of Dawn I can pick up too. We can squirt it on him before dumping the water over him,” Maverick offers.

“Y’all!” Hydro shouts. “Plug your fucking noses and deal with it. Who gives a fuck if he stinks? Maybe him sitting in his own shit will get him talking.”

“Don’t count on it,” Mane issues.

“Look at his face. He's enjoying everyone’s discomfort.” Once Ella points that out, we all notice the madness in his eyes.

“Fine, let him rot in his own stench. It’ll serve him right,” Kruger excuses. “At least his clothes aren’t holding in the odor anymore.” He lifts the articles of clothing and takes them over to the burn pile to be set on fire once we’re done interrogating both him and Laura. We have fire pits sporadically spread throughout our property. Some of them are for downtime but most of them are for burning weeds and such.

“Now,” Hydro says, stepping into Benji’s line of sight. “Where is Myles?”

“Good question,” Benji laughs. “Guess you need to figure that out for yourselves because I won’t be telling you any fucking thing.”

Unable to resist the temptation, I march forward, draw back my fist and let it fly, hitting him square in the jaw. “Listen here, you piece of shit. I’ll rip all of your nails from their beds one at a time, then if you still don’t feel like talking, I’ll start removing each digit individually.”

“Ooh, I’m shaking in my boots.” Benji mocks me. “Oh, wait! I’m not wearing any.”

“Smartass motherfucker,” Tex thunders. “Maybe you’d do better if we started removing your teeth first.”

“Aww, you’re going to make me cry,” Benji heckles. “Whatever shall I do without any teeth? It’s not like you’re going to let me live long enough to eat another meal.”

“You got that right,” Gunner interjects. “At least you’re not begging to see another day like Julia did. She was so much fun to chase and catch. When she faced her death, she begged and pleaded.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Benji roars. “Where is she? Where’s my girl?”

“Your girl?” Ella scoffs. “Did she know she was yours?”

“Yes,” he hisses. “We had an understanding. We could see other people but we belonged to each other. From the first day we saw each other. Now tell me, where is she?” Like we’re going to give him that information. He’ll be seeing her soon enough—in Hell where they’ll eternally fry in hellfire.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Tex taunts, hitting the taser trigger and causing Benji to screech like a girl. In fact, if we had been inside, he would’ve broken glass, it was that shrill!

“Huh, well, even though she was a sick twisted bitch, she chased me all over the place,” I muse. “Guess you weren’t as important as you thought after all seeing as she vowed undying and everlasting love to me.”

“It was a ploy,” Benji declares. “It’s how she caught men in her web so she could take them for all they were worth.”

“Are you sure about that, Benji boy?” Kruger asks. “Because from what she said when we mouse trapped her, Mason was the love of her life.” I’m not sure if she said that or not, but when Kruger tells Benji that, he loses his shit and begins thrashing. “Wow. Calm down, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

Benji’s face is so red it’s as if he’s been outside in the heat of the day. There’s a vein in his forehead that’s pulsating and while I’m no doctor, I bet his blood pressure is sky high right now. “Yeah, too bad she wasn’t my type,” I sneer.

“Or a bark burn,” Tex tacks on.

“Doesn’t matter where she is,” Gunner reasons. “You won’t ever see her again. By now, her bones have rotted and Mother Earth has claimed her.”

“You won’t get away with this!” Benji roars.

“Seems we already have,” Hydro states, smirking. He steps forward to make sure Benji’s attention is solely on him. “Now, I’ll ask again. Where is Myles?”

“I’m not telling,” Benji sullenly replies, only to shriek when Tex taps his thigh with the taser. Granted, he didn’t pull the trigger this time, but the threat is there. “The only way you’ll get anything from me is when you take me to where Julia is.”

“This is not a tit for tat situation, you fool,” I inform him. “This is how this shit works, moron. You tell us where my brother is and we give you a quick death. You keep your trap shut and you’ll wish you were never born.”

“Too late,” the asshole states, snarling. “I wished I wasn’t born the day I started thinking for myself and recognized there was something wrong with everyone else.”

“What do you mean by that?” Mane asks, her mind wanting to understand what made him act the way he does.

“The day my balls dropped, my mother started looking at me the way a woman looks at a man. She used me, sold me, and bred me. My dad turned a blind eye to her sickness, and when I was old enough and met Julia, she and I devised a plan to get rid of them. And we did, quite spectacularly.”

“I’m sorry you experienced that, Benji,” Mane says, her tone soft and soothing. “But that’s not an excuse to do the things to people that you have. You don’t want to be like them, do you?”

“I’m nothing like them,” he spits out, his eyes narrowed on my woman.

“Mane,” I say, my tone laced with warning.

She pats me on my thigh and moves away from my arms. I reach out to grab her and pull her back but Gunner stops me, shaking his head.

That pisses me off.

Where’s the overprotective father? You know, the one who inserts himself into her life and tries to manipulate things. The one that learned of my importance in her life and did some digging into files to find out my location and flew out to scope me out.

That’s the man I need right now. This calm, cool, collected son of a bitch is too damn placid for my way of thinking.

“Watch,” Gunner issues, his eyes never straying from his daughter.